The invention provides an analytical method of calculating and analyzing the powder metal production of a component or part. Traditionally, such components or parts are made of ferrous metal which is usually cut to size from a stock bar or similar starting piece, and then machined to the final component configuration. Such parts include gears, bushings, spacers, and a myriad of ferrous metal components. More often than not, the beginning material is typically wrought steel or cast steel.
It can be readily understood that the complexity and cost associated with machining such parts are considerable. Such machining requires several steps, even with the use of modern computer numerical control machining centers. Further, the amount of metal lost when machining openings in parts such as spaces between teeth in a gear or central openings in a bushing or a spacer, results in unnecessary production of waste or scrap metal.
An alternative to such machining of components such as spacers, bushings, and gears and other similar parts is to produce the component using a powder metallurgy process. The powder metallurgy process involves the steps of providing a suitable powder metal of desired alloy, designing a die that will result in a near final configuration of the component, compacting the powder metal in the die to form a powder metal blank, sintering the powder metal blank to improve the characteristics of the blank, which usually involves an improved density, possibly re-compacting the sintered blank, and then subjecting the sintered blank to the usual tempering or quenching operations to achieve the desired final metallurgical structure of the component. A minimum of final machining will then be needed to bring the component to the desired final shape.
The advantages of such powder metal production operations are obvious in that significant amounts of machining are eliminated, that the generation of scrap metal is greatly reduced as the initial die compaction is to a near final shape of the component, and that the final component can usually be produced at a significantly reduced cost from the traditional machining operations.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method of analyzing the powder metal production of a component to calculate the savings for the production of such component compared to the traditional machining production method for the component.